Does anyone know precisely how they dispatch rides? Like how do they decide which driver gets which passengers ride request? I sometimes feel like Lyft is intentionally f*****g with me just to see what my limits are.

So Saturday night, I end an Uber ride out in the boonies of Moreno Valley, turn on my lyft app and get pinged for a plus ride 25 minutes away. Not too surprising, as I think it just took me 15 minutes driving on this dirt road. Whatever, it’s a Plus ride, I realize that there are fewer plus vehicles on the road so let’s see where it takes me.

25 minutes and 15 miles later, I pick up 3 people that just prefer to pay the extra fare for the extra space, and proceed to drive them home from the movie theater which is 1.58 miles away from their house As we pull onto their street, I get an alert that a passenger has been added to my queue. Excellent. Okay good, drop them off and get my $4.50 in fare and the navigation switches to the next passenger’s pickup … 29 minutes away in Beaumont, 26 miles away. It’s another Plus ride, I’ve never been out in that direction before but I know there’s a casino out that way, and it’s got me set to arrive just as the bars are closing. Could be fruitful… I hope. Okay, Lyft. You wouldn’t repeatedly f**** me like that, would you?
Yes. They would. 33 minutes later I arrive at an empty Stater Bros parking lot with a sinking feeling in my stomach. I call the passenger, “hi, this is your driver, am I at the right location? Where are you located?” Slurring drunk guy answers me “Wtf bitch, whatchu mean where I am located, like where do I live? Why do you want to know where I live at? Where you at?” ”I’m in the Stater Bros parking lot. This is your Lyft driver. You called for a ride correct?” Suddenly clear speech, “oh no, that wasn’t me. Sorry about that, haha bye” and hangs up.
… …are you flipping kidding me right now? Wtf Lyft! I just wasted an hour of my time driving all the f​:speak_no_evil:ck over the place for nothing!!! So I turned on my Uber app and waited out the rider no show before turning off the Lyft app and then they give me that freaking user survey “how happy are you with the Lyft driver app today?” Wouldn’t you like to know Lyft??? Wouldn’t you like to​:speak_no_evil: know?! I accept an Uber request and pick up one drunk from some hole in the wall bar and then set my destination mode for home and called it a night.
But wait! My story isn’t over yet though!

So here we are, early Monday morning. Fill up my gas tank and go online. One Uber ride to the airport. Turn on the Lyft app after dropping him off, and I’m pinged to pick up Stephanie 18 minutes away. you f****** are going to do this to me again? Fine. Whatever. Accept… Stephanie cancels because yeah, 18 minutes for a regular Lyft? F**** that bullshit. We all know there’s gotta be a closer driver than that. I see those amps out there at just about every intersection! Good call Stephanie!DING Carrie, 15 minutes away FINE! Get a text that my passenger is a VIP, one-way ride blah blah blah, okay great. I know the drill. I drive to the address, and tap arrived and discovered there’s no connectivity here. Of course. So I try calling the passenger to let her know I’ve arrived. It goes straight to voicemail, which is full. A man comes out of the house and gets into his work truck. ‍♀️”hello, is Carrie here!”
“Nope, she doesn’t live here.”
“Carrie used to live here, but she moved.”
Terrific, thanks. I’m still having connectivity issues, so Lyft still isn’t even registering that I’m freaking here.
“You have lost contact with the Lyft system. Please relocate to an area with better network coverage.” “YEAH, I KNOW, THANKS!!”

So I drive around the corner to the 7-11 and finally get a signal to wait out the flipping timer to collect my hard earned freaking no-show fee.
Picked up another Uber pax, dropped them off. Open Lyft and Ding Plus ride for Victor 29 minutes away. I’m letting the timer wind down on this because seriously, wtf??? He cancels before the timer finishes. Then a minute later, the same Plus ride request for Victor 29 minutes away so what else am I doing with my time right now? F*****it. Maybe he’ll cancel again. So I start to drive, and I give him a call “Hello Victor, this is Sarah” “hello, I’m not ready yet” he says. So I say “yes that’s fine, I’m still 30 minutes away, is that okay?” “Yes that’s okay, I don’t need the ride until tonight when I get out of work.”
“Okay well, there’s a schedule ride function in the app you can use to get a ride for tonight. You’ll need to cancel this ride because it’s sending me to pick you up right now. So go ahead and cancel and choose the schedule a ride option in the app.”
“Oh, okay, thank you,” he says.

So with all that AND all the unaccompanied minors, I turned away today… I should have just flipping stayed home.

Yeah I wasn’t saying Lyft cancelled the rides. I’m just irritated that they keep sending me these rides that take me more time and gas to get to the passeger than I earn getting them where they’re going. Pickup 20 minutes away to drive to a destination 2 minutes away. It’s bullshit.

After all this time driving I’ve learned that it all balances out, sometimes we don’t make a killing on every ride, sometimes we have 700% PT, and it pays us $48 to take someone two blocks. Although I have learned that most of the time when I go to a pickup further away in my Market, I’m usually tipped pretty well

Here’s a way to stop getting new requests that you won’t get that 29 minute away while you’re on another ride. Go to Lyft up at the top and hit go off-line and it will ask you do you want us to be your last ride. You say yes, this way when you get to your destination, you got a choice if you want to add another customer, not because if they just give it to you.

Request goes to the closest driver except on the lyft, where they’re trying to help a driver with destination filter. Some of these far-off requests you are seeing may be coming to you because other drivers closer have already declined or not accepted because they suspected something was undesirable about the ride so it would be other drivers screwing the system coming to you that you’re seeing. It’s no surprise sloppy seconds. If you’re worried about your cancellation or acceptance rate with Lyft just accept them and keep driving wherever you’re driving and eventually the rider should cancel hopefully within 2 minutes to save the cancellation fee which is usually what they do when they’re picking up is this far away. Once in a great while say at 3:30 in the morning there’s no guarantee the ride request won’t continually come back to you. I canceled one or did not accept it three times, and it still came back to me I got to the house all the lights were on people were running everywhere throughout the house. I backed up into the driveway and sat there for 5 minutes I got out and open the hatchback and stood there for five minutes. I went and knocked on the door and asked if I could get the luggage they were miffed but showed me where the luggage was. I put all five bags in the car got in the car and sat and waited another five minutes then this family of Caucasians came out got in my car. And they immediately began complaining that I had the Bollywood station on. I didn’t even know they were Indian until they started complaining about it. I did what any good driver would do at this point and put on some South Indian music and sold the artist as a local kid which he is and turned the conversation into how talented he is so they quieted down. I felt bad for the family the kids obviously didn’t want to go wherever they were going especially at the crack of dawn I don’t know how they would have gotten there without my patience